Quinn woke in a cold sweat at the sound of the war horn.
We’re under attack already? But we’re still a month out!
He could hear screams of fear and agony in the distance, but they were all too quickly getting closer. His tent-mates–also awoken by the sounds of battle–scrambled to equip themselves for the fight to come. Mortals were only given a basic leather chestplate and a shield for defense, and a simple straight sword for offense, so they readied themselves in short order.
Quinn took just over a minute to gear up. He would’ve been faster, but his trembling hands struggled to latch the various buckles and ties on his armor. He wished he could be fearless like so many of his peers seemed to be, but he could admit his limitations to himself. He was weak. A coward. Once he proved himself in the war and Xiomavat saw fit to grant him power, he knew he would be a better man. Once he was strong, he wouldn’t be afraid anymore.
The fighting was practically on top of him by the time he exited the tent. It was hard to see what was going on clearly through the thick mass of bodies, but everyone seemed to be gathering around one specific point. The occasional spray of crimson and shine of metal were his only clues as to what lay at the center of the crowd.
“Press forward!”
“Don’t let him rest!”
“Tire him! Tie him down!”
A few commanding voices stood out amongst the cacophony, and the worst case scenario was confirmed in his mind: his enemy was a cultivator. He, along with the rest of the mortals, had been specially trained for this scenario. There was really only one way for them to kill a cultivator, and that was to wear them down with numbers. Even a Silver couldn’t fight forever, and if enough mortals could surround them and continuously pressure them, they would slip up eventually. The casualties would be astronomical, but the cultivator would eventually succumb to death.
Quinn steeled himself to carry out his duty. As more mortals pressed in behind him and he was pushed towards the enemy, he couldn’t help but wonder how many of his fellows had already been slain trying to take down this singular combatant. He couldn’t tell the enemy’s rank from the killing intent alone, but it was more than enough to make him feel faint just from standing nearby. If Quinn was lucky, maybe the man was a low enough rank to be tired already and he’d be the one to land the killing blow. Surely, Xiomavat would recognize him if he managed to slay a cultivator.
He inched closer and closer as the seconds passed, stepping over countless severed limbs or trampled bodies on the way. At some point cultivators had arrived near the outskirts of the crowd--he could feel their killing intent moving in from behind–but he had no idea if they were allied with Xiomavat or not. The crowd continued to be packed impossibly tight as more people tried to press forwards, and he was unable to even turn around to look at any newcomers. In any case, it didn’t seem they’d reach the man before he did.
When he’d finally migrated to the front of the group, Quinn was faced with a gory scene even his worst nightmares couldn’t have cooked up. The enemy cultivator stood covered from head to toe in heavy metal armor, drenched in blood. A 10 foot circle around him was relatively open, but the ground was littered with the dead and dying. Bodies were piled on top of each other waist high in some places, and in others the corpses were stamped partway into the muddied earth. The man was a walking cataclysm, moving inexorably onwards in a blur of deadly steel. His polearm was hardly visible as it was whipped with inhuman speed and precision in a circular pattern around his form, cutting down anyone unfortunate enough to enter its range.
One brave soul attempted to knock the glaive off course with his straight sword, only for it to be knocked free from his hand with a loud clang and terrifying momentum. An instant later, the sword lodged itself in the stomach of a nearby soldier up to the hilt. The struck soldier fell dead, and the one standing directly behind him cried out in pain as the blade had also wounded him deeply. The original attacker screamed, clutching at an obviously broken sword-arm before he too was cut down.
Throughout it all, the glaive’s path didn’t so much as stutter.
Someone behind Quinn roughly shoved him forward to fight the cultivator, and it was only due to the thick, bloody mud trapping his foot and tripping him that he avoided being beheaded. He lost hold of his shield and sword when he fell, but the prospect of taking precious time to search through the tangled bodies beneath him was terrifying. He didn’t want to die without at least trying to slow the enemy down.
Coming to terms with his end, Quinn crawled on his stomach towards the unsuspecting cultivator. The man was facing away from him now, and the glaive’s path left just enough room where Quinn should be able to move beneath it without being cut. By some miracle he reached the man in one piece, and promptly put his plan into action before he lost his nerve. Reaching out with both hands, Quinn grabbed the man’s ankle with all of his might.
If the man noticed Quinn’s attempt to slow him down, he didn’t react. Quinn was dragged across the filthy battlefield one step at a time. To heap on further indignity, the cultivator didn’t seem to be hindered at all by the additional weight.
Another soldier, seeing Quinn’s ‘success’, also dove forward beneath the path of the glaive and grabbed onto the other ankle. Again, the cultivator didn’t seem to register the action.
Inspired by two ‘successes’ in a row, mortals began holding onto Quinn and his counterpart to use them as human ropes to pull back on the cultivators legs. Only then did the enemy turn and give Quinn any attention. There was neither joy nor animosity in the cultivator’s gaze. In those eyes, he only saw his own death reflected.
No! I’m not ready to die!
A blur of metal passed close to Quinn’s face and in a moment of fear he lost his grip on the man. As soon as he let go he was pulled backwards several feet by the many comrades who had been holding onto him, inadvertently sparing him from death a second time. Ashamed by his cowardice, he tried to push himself upright to rejoin the fight… only to find that he hadn’t relinquished his hold at all. Both of his arms were gone at the elbow.
He opened his mouth to scream in horror, but someone stepped on his back and pushed him into the mud. He struggled to lift his head up and clear his airways of the rancid dirt, but more and more footsteps rained down across his body as the crowd moved over top of him to follow the enemy.
As his body grew cold and his vision darkened, only one thought ran through his mind: He wanted to go home.
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Samantha did what she could to prolong Tobias’s fight. She directed Silas to drop Alchemist’s Fire on tents and resources to draw manpower away. She cut the ropes tying livestock and mounts to posts and panicked them so they’d flee the area. She even used [Telekinesis] to cause ruckuses in other areas so soldiers would be forced to investigate. Unfortunately, everyone knew going into this that this was never a fight Tobias was meant to win. Sooner or later, being overwhelmed was inevitable.
As more and more cultivators pushed through the crowd of mortals and closed in on Tobias, it was obvious that the fight had reached a tipping point. Though Tobias had become Low Bronze in the years after she’d formed a spirit bond with him and he could essentially face an endless number of mortals, adding even two Low Coppers into the mix would strain his capabilities.
It was time for the finale.
“Silas, get in position for the last drop,” she instructed.
“I’ll be there in 10 seconds.”
Samantha watched with increasing nervousness as stronger cultivators started to appear. Tobias was being pressed hard now and had entered a fully defensive state. Attacks started making it through his armor and forced him to expend qi to stay in the fight.
Just a little longer…
She couldn’t mentally communicate with Tobias the same way she could with Silas, but they had planned this attack extensively and he was expecting what came next.
“I’m ready when you are,” Silas informed her.
“Do it,” she confirmed.
In quick succession glass vials filled with black liquid fell from the sky aimed at Tobias’s location. When they shattered, dark clouds of smoke exploded outwards and heavily obscured visibility in the area. When Samantha used [Desert Breeze] to control the spread of the smoke and condense it into a smaller area, visibility dropped to zero. It was as if Tobias and everything within 100 feet of him was shrouded in the blackest ink. This was a bit of a gamble considering Xiomavat’s followers thrived in darkness, but there was a big difference between natural darkness and a smokescreen. The cultivators would possibly be able to navigate the area if they made use of their sphere of perception, but the mortals would be completely helpless.
As soon as Tobias’s position was shrouded with impenetrable darkness, he used the remainder of his qi to fire [Concussive Blast] blindly into his surroundings. Explosion after explosion elicited fresh screams of terror and pain, and she could only imagine the pandemonium that was occurring beneath her. Tobias had been preserving as much of his qi pool as possible for this moment, and his efforts were wholly rewarded. With each activation of the art costing a mere 2 qi, over 100 blasts were unleashed one after the other over the course of a minute. They didn’t stop until Tobias’s qi reserves were fully depleted and his construct dissolved… but the enemy didn’t know this.
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The fighting continued for several minutes as the blinded soldiers turned on each other in fear for their lives. Any cultivators that remained within the smokescreen were swarmed by mortals who couldn’t discern if the killing intent they felt came from their enemy or their allies, but attacked just in case. The cultivators, unable to just ignore being attacked, killed the mortals in kind. Some mortals, frightened beyond sense, swung their weapons at anyone who so much as bumped into them. The mortals who were wounded by their fellows believed that a larger enemy force had crept into their midst in the chaos, and also began attacking indiscriminately. The panic spread through the darkness even as the cultivators tried to bark commands and restore order.
Normally, Samantha wouldn’t be able to control this volume of air with her art for any extended period of time. However, a trick she’d come across over the years was invaluable for this specific use case. Rather than exert control over the entire space at once, she only needed to prevent the smoke from dispersing. This meant she could focus solely on the ‘borders’ of her smokescreen while leaving the inside alone. With this approach, the amount of qi she needed to spend was reduced by about 80%. Furthermore, since today wasn’t particularly windy and she just needed to stop the airflow at the borders, she was able to maintain the barrier until the infighting had died down.
Releasing her hold on the art, she waited to see the full scope of the damage they’d managed to inflict. When the smoke finally cleared, the results were beyond her expectations. She would do a complete tally with her mind meridian later, but at a glance the death toll looked to be in the hundreds with many more wounded or maimed. Granted, this would likely be the most effective this tactic would ever be since the enemy would be more prepared for it now, but she was satisfied with what they’d managed to achieve. If the enemy’s morale didn’t plummet after this carnage, then the grains and other foodstuffs she and Silas poisoned would certainly do the job.
And this was only the beginning. She planned to do these raids daily until the army reached her kingdom’s border. With the guerilla mercenaries lying in wait for the army in the swamplands nearest the border, entirely new horrors would be ready for them.
“Silas, are you ready to head back? We need to get you rested and restocked before the next run.”
“I’ll meet you back there,” he confirmed. “You should go ahead and take care of your other duties.”
“Alright, fly safe,” she agreed. Then, she canceled [Spectral Projection].
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“General, we’ve received the latest reports from the mercenary units,” Donovan announced. Samantha took the stack of papers he offered to her and thumbed through them quickly.
So far, all of her plans were proceeding relatively smoothly. The mercenaries in particular were performing even better than she’d hoped.
The mobile mercenary unit had devastated the enemy’s food supply lines, and the army had no way to effectively retaliate. As bonding with any beast other than Xiomavat was viewed by the cultists as heresy, even the fastest mortal riders couldn’t keep up with her elite mobile force. The army eventually sent nearly all of their Peak Bronzes to act as caravan guards for the foreseeable future, effectively reducing their CR by around 12,000. Still, even with the heightened security in place, her mercenaries were delaying or destroying just enough resources to keep the enemy hungry. As for the guerilla unit, they’d spent this time readying the land near the border for the army’s arrival. Last week she’d given the order to re-flood the valley, and almost the entire stretch from the border to Feld was saturated with water by this point. With the daily harassment she’d already been inflicting on the army, she wouldn’t be surprised if their travel through the wetlands created a large wave of defectors.
She’d been steadily chipping away at the army with Silas and Tobias for the last month, both physically and mentally. As anticipated, the first assault was the most impactful, but that didn’t mean that the cultists had ever completely fended them off. They had no projectionists amongst their forces to counter her, if they even knew that she was the direct cause of their misery in the first place. They had also never managed to capture Tobias, nor caught the moment when his construct dissipated due to the smokescreen tactic. As far as they knew, Tobias was just a talented cultivator who was frustratingly adept at escaping them after every attack.
They had tried multiple methods to combat the attacks with varying success.
The cultists guarded the food stores constantly now so that Samantha was no longer able to easily poison them. She stopped trying to taint the food early on because the effort required for success was better spent elsewhere, but the enemy would never leave their supplies unprotected again. With the incoming supplies dwindling further due to the intervention of her mercenaries, even more guards were assigned this task which meant less overall rest for the troops.
Increasing the general security around the camp had a similar impact of decreasing the soldiers’ rest. In addition, those on duty were increasingly being distrusted and accused when Tobias kept ‘sneaking past them’. The fact of the matter was, it was nearly impossible to perfectly distribute guards amongst an army of this size. Even if they managed the feat, everyone was looking for an armored man and not a floating, pinky-sized statue. As such, there was always a weak point where Tobias could appear and cause damage before being confronted. This made him appear unstoppable while making the guards on shift look incompetent. The army as a whole was in a constant state of anxiety and many suffered from exhaustion due to their sleep being regularly disrupted. They never knew when or where Tobias would strike. Only that every single day, without fail, he would.
Another tactic the cultists employed was mixing the sleeping arrangements so that mortals were no longer vulnerably grouped up or isolated. They also created several ‘fast response’ units out of high ranking cultivators to quickly put a stop to Tobias’ rampage. However, this had multiple secondary consequences that worked in her favor. A significant number of cultivators resented being placed in lower quality sleeping quarters and forced to crowd in with their ‘lessers’. Along that same line of thinking, many assigned to the fast response units disliked being asked to perform extra duties. They felt that such jobs belonged to lower ranked cultivators, and were frustrated by the mortals and Coppers’ inability to properly protect themselves. According to their logic, by virtue of having reached a high level of advancement they earned a certain amount of leisure outside of actual combat. Being asked to defend those weaker than them on top of being ordered to work more was like adding insult to injury. Any chastisement or punishment for not responding quickly enough to a threat sowed further discontent.
The combination of all these factors caused morale to plummet so low that it practically dragged on the ground. The cultists as a whole grew short tempered and irritable, which caused small fights to plague the ranks. Some truly discouraged soldiers even went so far as to desert. The higher ups relied on harsh public punishments to try and re-establish control, but all this achieved was spreading more fear and distrust.
Samantha set the papers down. “Very good. Do we have an estimate of what the army’s CR is at present?”
Donovan tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Looking purely at the numbers you’ve reported and assuming all those who were injured were fully healed, we’re looking at only a 2,575 CR reduction for your group’s efforts, and the 12,000 CR reduction from the mercenaries’. This would make the enemy army’s CR roughly 435,425.”
She couldn’t help but sigh at that number. All in all, her daily assaults had claimed the lives of around 1900 mortals, 50 Low Coppers, 25 Mid Coppers, 15 High Coppers, and 10 Peak Coppers. In terms of injuries, there were about 1300 mortals wounded and 200 or so cultivators of various ranks. After the initial attack–in which Tobias killed 120 mortals and wounded 200–the effectiveness dropped over the next week until Tobias averaged 10 kills and 15 injuries each day. The rest of the casualties came from Samantha and Silas’s alchemical warfare. In a twisted sort of way, it felt disappointing that their month of effort amounted to less than 3,000 CR worth of damage.
“However,” Donovan hedged, bringing her attention back to him. “I think it’s safe to say that this is hardly an accurate picture of reality. Most of the injured mortals were sent away if they were maimed rather than expend qi or alchemicals to restore them. Those too injured to travel were either left to die or given mercy killings by their peers. The injured cultivators were more carefully tended to, but are likely weakened due to scarring or other such issues. If we factor in a 10% CR reduction due to low morale–which is highly conservative, mind you–that could bring the total CR down to maybe… 390,000?”
Samantha glanced at the other advisors to check if they agreed with Donovan's assessment, and no one sought to correct him.
“That’s not a bad outcome,” she finally said. “I hope the mercenaries can achieve similar results. Speaking of which, they should be encountering the enemy soon. I’ll head out with Silas to make their first meeting a little more… welcoming.”
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Samantha’s spectral form observed the marching army as they walked in a long, thin line through the swamp. The original ‘road’ through this area–which they were currently using–was a densely packed dirt path that was made almost rock hard by being regularly traveled. After the area was flooded it was the closest thing remaining to solid ground.
Upon reaching the swamp, the army had to choose between two less-than-ideal options. Option one was to move in line so everyone could make use of the road, but this would leave them more vulnerable to attack since their forces would be spread out. Option two was to ignore the road in favor of maintaining their formation, but then a majority of the soldiers would need to walk through murky water that ranged from an inch to knee deep. This would theoretically improve their chances of fending off an attack, but came with a slew of additional health and safety concerns. Perhaps it wouldn’t matter that much if Feld was but a day away, but with the landscape slowing their progress they had about a week’s worth of walking ahead of them.
Obviously, the cultists felt using the road was the superior choice. This was also the choice that Samantha had planned for.
A mortal near the front of the column triggered a tripwire that was hidden in a shallow puddle of water, and the road for several hundred feet behind him erupted upwards in explosions of fire, acid, and poison. In an instant, hundreds of mortals died or were severely wounded. Understandably panicked by the sight and wanting to avoid a similar fate, the soldiers who had narrowly avoided the blasts fled the path in favor of the cloudy waters alongside it. That was when they started stepping into the hidden spike pits.
The one to two foot deep pits were lined with sharpened stakes pointed at a downward angle. This allowed the victim to step into it without much damage, but made it agonizing–if not impossible–to extract their leg from. This, of course, made them prime targets for…
An arrow impacted a trapped soldier’s chest with such force that it passed completely through him and embedded itself in another enemy’s leg. The dead man didn’t even hit the water before the other 550 arrows shot by the mercenaries and their Mid Silver commander flew through the air. Most of these arrows were mundane, but about a tenth of them carried additional explosive payloads. When these arrows landed amongst the people still standing on the road, it caused even more soldiers to flee into the swamp in search of cover from nearby trees. This resulted in even more traps being sprung, which created more easy targets for the next volley… and round and round it went.
Samantha watched unflinchingly as the miserable scene unfolded. This was a hell of her own making, and it was only fitting that she bear witness to the horrors she ordered inflicted.
“I’m in position.” Silas informed her.
Those further from the explosion had started retreating back along the road, returning to where they’d already passed by. In their minds, since they’d moved through this area once without issue that meant it was safe.
That was an incorrect assumption.
The mortals pushed frantically against people down the line who were unaware of what was happening in the front. Almost all of them were stopped before getting too far, either to be questioned on what was happening or screamed at for abandoning their duty. This caused an increasingly large clump of confused soldiers to form.
“Drop everything you have on top of them, Silas.”
When it came to war–real war–everyone lost something. Even the victors. She didn’t know the full scope of what she would lose yet, but she was going to make sure that these cultists lost more.